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TIGTA's telework success sprouts savings, changes in other IT areas

Ask the CIO

Treasury's Inspector General for Tax Administration has too many printer and
copier devices.

Reducing the number of devices is one simple way TIGTA is changing its workforce
culture.

"It doesn't make a whole lot of sense to have many devices for a single
experience. In other instances, given the mission of these individuals, sometimes
it does make sense to have some level of redundancy built into your capabilities,"
said George Jakabcin, the chief information officer for Treasury's Inspector
General for Tax Administration. "That requires some culture change. That requires
some education. That requires some buy-in on the part of the business. We are
having the conversations now. We've done the data collection to try to figure out
just exactly how many pages, copy and scans did we do in the last year and where
do we analyze that. What's the sweet spot for us?"

He said an officewide policy where a ratio of say 10-to-1 of employee to multi-
functional device may work well, but there always will be some exceptions for
small offices or for people who need more security when printing, copying or
scanning.

Jakabcin said the devices are coming up with more security features all the time,
where now someone who needs secure printing or copying capabilities can enter
their smart identity card into the machine's reader before it will print their
specific job.

"We're in the process of re-educating and reintroducing that to our user
populations so they know it's a capability," he said. "All of which is a step
toward introducing what may be perceived by some as a reduction in the footprint
that might not otherwise be well received."

Part of the reason for the printer copier device rationalization is the expansion
of telework among TIGTA employees. This is in addition to the cost savings and
energy initiatives that already comes from having so many people working remotely.

Jakabcin said almost 85 percent of their workforce is telework
authorized, and the entire workforce is enabled if required. This past winter,
he said, the multi-Internet and network access points held up well during the snow
and ice storms when a majority of TIGTA's employees worked from home or outside
the office.

"We are looking at ways to improve the throughput of the user experience so that
there is less differentiation between user experience from remote access versus
being in the [headquarters office]," he said. "We've already neutralized access as
it relates to the [HSPD-12] card. It's identical to when you are in the office.
[We are] one of the few organizations to have met the PIV mandate not only for in
office, but for remote access as well."

Jakabcin said TIGTA took care of the logical access requirement when it refreshed
its laptops in 2012, and the machines are running Microsoft Windows 7.

"We are going to, less than a year from now, start looking at the replacements for
the next cycle," he said. "We put these in place on a four-year cycle basis. Being
two years in, looking at approximately 18 months out, we will start the planning
cycle for the next and have to engage. You can't do these change-outs overnight.
It's unclear at this point whether we will move to another laptop environment,
whether we move to a bring-your-own-device because of a virtualized experience, or
if we will go to some tablets. I believe there is a future for tablets across the
enterprise and certainly for some specific locations, specific functions and
specific roles and responsibilities where that tablet might be a better choice for
some people than a full blown laptop."

Virtualization, consolidation opens the door for more

TIGTA has virtualized about 70 percent of its servers — up from 50 percent
in 2011 — and has consolidated much of its enterprise infrastructure into
two main data centers.

Jakabcin said virtualization also opens the door to wireless connections for the
laptops. TIGTA tested the wireless network and moved into a production
environment, which now lets employees connect into the network from anywhere under
certain circumstances.

"It has turned out to be a tremendous efficiency boost for our workforce. It has
improved our user experience from the standpoint of getting closer and closer to
that anytime and anywhere type of environment," he said. "So we are very pleased
with that. It has gone very well for us. Our testing was superior. We just went
through our certification and accreditation for the Federal Information Security
Management Act, and our tester said they couldn't get in."

Jakabcin said TIGTA is now considering what all of these initiatives mean from a
mobile environment. He said the agency traditionally has been a BlackBerry shop
and will continue to be from an infrastructure standpoint because the new
technology does allow them to manage other devices.

TIGTA is analyzing what those other devices could be and how the transition could
work.